Pulling Apart

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A state-by-state examination of trends in income inequality over the past two business cycles finds that inequality has grown in most parts of the country since the late 1980s. The incomes of the country’s highest-income families have climbed substantially, while middle- and lower-income families have seen only modest increases.​

In fact, the long-standing trend of growing income inequality accelerated between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s (the latest period for which state data are available).

• On average, incomes have declined by 2.5 percent among the bottom fifth of families since the late 1990s, while increasing by 9.1 percent among the top fifth.​

• In 19 states, average incomes have grown more quickly among the top fifth of families than among the bottom fifth since the late 1990s. In no state has the bottom fifth grown significantly faster than the top fifth.

• For very high-income families — the richest 5 percent — income growth since the late 1990s has been especially dramatic, and much faster than among the poorest fifth of families.​

Similarly, families in the middle of the income distribution have fallen farther behind upper-income families in many states since the late 1990s:​

• On average, incomes have grown by just 1.3 percent among the middle fifth of families since the late 1990s, well below the 9.1 percent gain among the top fifth. Income disparities between the top and middle fifths have increased significantly in Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, and Texas. Income disparities did not decline significantly in any state.​

Workers always seek to solve the chronic ills they face. Whether individual workers are conscious of it yet or not, the ultimate outcome of this struggle is socialism. To determine the strategy and tactics required for immediate progress and more basic change, it is necessary to be clear about what propels progressive change and about which struggles, classes, and social forces have the potential to play decisive roles. The history of our country and the experience of struggle worldwide in recent years confirm the Marxist assertion that the struggle of the working class against the capitalist class is the chief driving force for fundamental progressive change.
The working class is compelled to resist increased exploitation. It seeks to improve living conditions by increasing workers’ share of the new value they create at the expense of the capitalists. This class struggle takes place in the factories where commodities are produced and in the venues of distribution and sale of commodities. This is the economic side of the class struggle. The class struggle also has a political side. It plays out in struggles over governmental action or inaction, over social spending and tax policy, over elections, and ultimately over which class or formation of class and social forces becomes dominant in holding and exercising political power. The class struggle also exists in the realm of ideology, that is, between social and political ideas and values that justify the political and economic policies of the contending classes.
The class struggle starts with the fight for wages, hours, benefits, working conditions, job security, and jobs. But it also includes an endless variety of other forms for fighting specific battles: resisting speed-up, picketing, contract negotiations, strikes, demonstrations, lobbying for pro-labor legislation, elections, and even general strikes. When workers struggle against the capitalist class or any part of it on any issue with the aim of improving or defending their lives, it is part of the class struggle.
There is no limit to the range of issues that are part of the class struggle: peace, democratic liberties, for full equality and against racism, health care, decent schools, public housing, social security, environmental protection, and more. The class struggle takes on more conscious forms in strike struggles, which are expressions of trade union consciousness. The class struggle reaches full class and socialist consciousness only when the alliance of class and social forces is built under working-class leadership in order to win power and construct socialism. The activity of the Communist Party is based on building full class consciousness, which includes socialist consciousness.
The working class is the only force capable of becoming the general leader of the struggle for full social progress and socialism. Capitalism’s dependence on the working class to create all wealth gives it a strategic role in the production process and great potential power.
The size of the working class and its experience of collective labor and collective struggle prepare it to lead the struggle for progress. In the words of the Communist Manifesto, the working class is “the only truly revolutionary class,” because only the working class has no other interest than ending capitalism completely and replacing it with socialism. These qualities and experiences also make the working class fertile ground for the ideas of socialism and Marxism and for Communist Party membership.
The working class of the U.S. is vibrant and diverse. The working class constitutes the great bulk of the country’s population, and is continually growing—workers and their families are a substantial majority of the total population. The diversity of the working class includes skilled and unskilled labor, white-collar and blue-collar workers, people of all ages, organized and unorganized, employed, underemployed, and unemployed. Our working class is almost evenly composed of men and women. Most nationally and racially oppressed communities are more heavily working-class than the country as a whole, and together constitute more than 25% of the working class, a percentage that is rapidly increasing. Despite its increasing diversity, ours is a single working class, a class whose unity is growing and deepening.
The Communist Manifesto declared: “Workers of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.” From the smallest of class struggles to the largest, unity is the key to victory. The experience of working people in their workplaces and neighborhoods is such that only by joining together to fight for their common interests and demands can they win. This is the guiding principle of all unions and people’s organizations: in unity is strength. Organization is the characteristic weapon of the working class and popular movements.
The Communist Party seeks to build broad unity to achieve the strategic and tactical goals of the working class. The major obstacle to working class unity is capitalist class-promoted racism, which must be fought by all—full unity will only be built when substantial numbers of white workers participate in the fight for full equality and against racism, based on an understanding of their self-interest in class unity.
This principle is not just true in struggles in the workplace, on the campus, or in the neighborhood, but is equally true at the ballot box, in the larger political and social struggles, and in the battle for the hearts and minds of the public. Only by joining together can the working class and its allies win the larger struggles for dignity, rights, and power. The working class cannot achieve its ultimate goal—socialism—without fighting for its leading role in the context of unity with other class and social forces.
Working class unity is fundamental to all key social and political victories. It is essential to the class struggle. In recent decades there has been a decline in the percentage of people in the workforce who are union members. One of the most crucial ways of increasing the strength and unity of the working class as a whole is organizing the unorganized. Working-class unity depends on uniting all the diverse sectors of the multiracial, multinational working class in the U.S.

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<b>Moderator</b>

Moderator

So did this study take into account things like education, work ethic, longevity at a job, creativity and initiative on the job, attitude towards life, etc? All of these things tend to have a great effect on income.

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Active Member

Call a government policies geared toward the middle- and working-classes communistic all you want. It is well past time that we had a government policies that benefit someone other than the elite and those who are their sycophants.

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Well-Known Member

Call a government policies geared toward the middle- and working-classes communistic all you want. It is well past time that we had a government policies that benefit someone other than the elite and those who are their sycophants.

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